


Contraflow

by Lobelia321



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: 'Duet' episode response., F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-03-07
Updated: 2010-03-07
Packaged: 2017-10-07 19:09:53
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,456
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/68263
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lobelia321/pseuds/Lobelia321
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Whoa. Being a man is like, whoa. In fact, it's more like double whoa.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Contraflow

This story contains adult content of a sexual  
nature. Do not read if you are under the age of 18. Please also  
note that this website's [Terms of Use ](index.html)apply  
to you, even if you choose not to read them.

Title: Contraflow

 

Author: Lobelia

 

Fandom: Stargate Atlantis

 

Characters: Lt Laura Cadman. Dr Rodney McKay. Also features Drs  
Katie Brown, Carson Beckett, and Radek Zelenka.

 

Summary: Whoa. Being a man is like, whoa. In fact, it's more like  
double whoa.

 

Feedback: Yes, please, I would love feedback! Anything, even if  
it's only one line, one word!

 

Rating: 18

 

Length: c. 14,000 words.

 

Spoilers: Series 2, Episode 4, 'Duet'.

 

Disclaimers: This is a work of amateur fiction. I am not making  
money. I did not invent these characters.

 

Warning: Deliberate misuse of 'laying'.

 

Thanks to: Isis for humblingly thorough beta, Ameripicking, and  
for the sticks and bones, and Sheldrake for the beating heart,  
and Phineasjones for last-minute wonderbeta. All remaining errors  
are my own.

For those who do not know these people:  
[Pics  
](http://pics.livejournal.com/lobelia321/gallery/00009k4h?page=1). :-)

**Contraflow**

 

by Lobelia

My name is Laura Cadman. I am a lieutenant  
in the United States Marine Corps, stationed at the intergalactic  
base of Atlantis and currently, I am trapped inside the body of  
Dr Rodney McKay.

**Thursday**

Whoa.

Being a man is like, whoa.

In fact, it's more like double whoa.

I am so totally not used to this.

It reminds me of when I was little and wanted  
to be a boy. I used to wear jeans and my brothers' football shirts,  
and everything had to be blue or green. Never, ever pink. And  
never, ever anything in the hair, any ribbon or scrunchie or bobby  
pin. Mom hated that. She'd been so sick of nothing but boys, and  
I was going to be her little special girl. Except I wasn't. Frilly  
socks? Nope. Patent leather strappy shoes? No, siree, not me.  
Ballet class and Barbie dolls? I chained the Barbies to the backs  
of the Action Man motorbikes and dragged them through the dirt  
until their heads came off.

Also, I cut my hair. That one time when  
I was nine. With the kitchen scissors.

It felt a bit like McKay's hair feels on  
me now. McKay can shake his head and nothing happens, nothing  
bobs, nothing flies in his eyes, nothing swishes round the back  
of the neck. The hair is invisible; it's just sort of there. And  
it's not even tied back, either.

The thing is, even though it's kind of cool  
to finally be a boy, a man, what I wanted to be all those years  
ago; the thing is, even though that's interesting, to see what  
it's _like_\-- why, of all men, does it have to be Dr Rodney  
McKay?

I mean, look at the guy!

If I had my choice, if I could be any man  
at all, I would _not_ be Rodney McKay. I would be, hell,  
I'd be, I don't know. Colonel Sheppard would be good, or that  
Ronon guy, man, that would be something. Those guys have got muscle  
and they kick ass and they strut around, being manly and all.  
They're what I joined this freaking outfit for, so I'd get to  
wear those snazzy boots and those out-of-this-world combat suits.  
So I'd get to strut and swear and shoot the bejeesus out of alien  
badasses.

Not to be stuck in some kind of flabby excuse  
for a bod!

And it's flabby, all right. He doesn't even  
know it is, he doesn't care. But I know. I feel it. There's flesh  
up around the belt, it _moves_ when he walks. When _we_  
walk. And when he undoes the belt, it all sort of goes _gloomph_  
and relaxes down and out. I did not go running for two hours every  
day for the past eight years so that my tummy can go _gloomph_  
when I take my belt off! It's gross, that's what it is. It is  
totally off-putting.

I do not know _what_ that Katie Brown  
sees in him. I have _no _idea. You wouldn't catch _me_  
wasting a Friday night on a date with Rodney McKay.

**Friday morning**

So what's with this waking-up shit? Does  
this happen to him every day?

He gets up, and there it is: low-level headache.

Now, I haven't had a headache since that  
time in high school when I fell off the rappelling cliff at Brandon  
Gorge that one time because me and Freddie, we had a bet that  
we didn't need to secure _all_ the carabiners, just the front-locking  
ones. Plus, we didn't wear helmets. That was part of the bet,  
too. So no wonder. Nine-foot drop. Could've been worse.

But McKay: he isn't dropping off any cliffs.  
All he's done is sleep. He should be rested and raring to go.  
Ten miles before breakfast, I could do that, easy. And then some  
nice orange-and-grapefruit juice, or what passes for orange-and-grapefruit  
juice around these parts, to go with a huge bowl of raisin bran  
and a double helping of...

No, we're not doing that, it seems. No running.  
No stretching, even. No pre-breakfast exercise at all. It's straight  
into the shower. Well, that's something at least. At least we're  
going to keep clean here.

He keeps his _boxers_ on in the shower.

"McKay," I tell him. "Do  
not keep your boxers on in the shower."

"What? What?" He still gets startled  
every time I say something. He drops the soap and bangs his temple  
on the shower head, and ow, that hurts. I felt that, too. Then  
he's scrambling round for the soap and oops, are those his _feet_?  
I haven't yet seen McKay's feet up close. Weird: they don't look  
at all like my own feet.

"It's unhygienic," I inform him.  
"You can't wash properly with your boxers on. You've got  
to take them _off_."

"I am not taking off my underwear,"  
says McKay. No, he doesn't say that; he _snaps_ that. "And  
that is final."

I roll my eyes inside his brain but whoa,  
maybe I was rolling them a little too forcefully because now the  
shower cubicle is rotating like it's in a Hitchcock movie and  
I'm getting vertigo because that was unexpected.

"Don't _do_ that!" yells  
McKay who's grabbing onto the shower curtain.

I want to grab on as well but it's a stupid  
idea, how is the shower curtain going to hold anyone up? I try  
to yank McKay's hand off the curtain but it seems my yanking isn't  
as forceful as my eye-rolling. Nothing happens. He stays grabbed  
onto the shower curtain, and then he doesn't because the whole  
shebang just sort of rips off in slow motion and falls onto his  
head; and now I can't see anything, the world's gone blue with  
yellow flowers all over it.

"Never," McKay says in a voice  
muffled by plastic, "_never_ talk to me in the shower  
again."

"Okay, okay," I say. "Geez.  
I'm just thinking of health issues here."

"Kindly leave my health to me, and  
no, I do not want you ogling me in... in the nude. It's bad enough  
having no privacy at all. I want to preserve at least some vestiges  
of dignity."

"You know, it isn't as if I've never  
seen a man's naked genitals before."

_That_ was  
not the right thing to say. _That_ gets him really mad, tearing  
at the curtain and making a sort of growling noise, and there's  
water dripping into my eyes and soap going up my nose.

So we're out of the shower, only half clean,  
and the headache's gotten worse. It's kind of throbbing now, above  
both ears. I don't like the feel of it at all, and I'm thinking,  
this is so the wrong kind of body to be trapped in, this is the  
_worst_ kind of body. And there's a sort of pressure as well,  
down below the navel, darned if I know what it is.

Oh. I know what it is.

I grin. He's got to take off his boxers  
_some time_.

I can't remember how we got through this  
yesterday. Bed pan? I don't know. I was still in a daze, in the  
infirmary, still sort of concussed. If you can be concussed without  
even having a freaking head. But now? I'm all there, oh yeah,  
and this is going to be interesting.

McKay is not taking his boxers off even  
now. His, I should add, _sodden_ boxers. That are highly  
uncomfortable, all clingy and cold and riding up his crack. My  
crack. Because I can feel that, and it's not pleasant.

"Okay. Why are you sitting down to  
pee?"

"I _always_ sit down. Do you mind?"

"Well, as it happens, I always sit  
down, too. So no, I don't mind. I was just wondering, you know,  
what it feels like to do it standing up."

"I am _not_ your personal trans-sexual  
human experiment. And will you stop talking to me while I'm in  
here, going about my morning ablutions, because this is really,  
really not the time nor the place, so can we just get on with  
it? I mean can _I_ just get on with it?"

"Yeah, of course. Go right ahead."

"Thank _you_."

He's not taking off his boxers. He's sitting  
on the can and he's groping round inside his shorts, through his  
fly, and pulling out his...

Whoa.

We have touch.

So that's what Dr Rodney McKay's dick feels  
like in Dr Rodney McKay's hand.

He's got hold of himself between the tips  
of thumb and index finger.

He's very careful not to grab more. Because  
he doesn't want me to _feel_ it, that's why, I just bet that's  
why. And he's very careful not to look down. Because he doesn't  
want me to _see_ it, either. All I can see is the wall across  
from the john, made not of tiles but of that weird styrofoamy  
stuff that you get so much of at this place, some sort of intercosmic  
fibre thing. So I'm staring at the white foamy stuff, and down  
below, there's a hot stream of piss whooshing out, and it doesn't  
feel so much different than when I was still a girl.

Then he shakes it (and yeah, that's a bit  
different), and now that I'm attuned to it, I can feel it _wobbling_  
around inside his boxers as he gets up. And okay, that is strange.

I bet there's pee all over the toilet what  
with him not looking but he's out of that bathroom in a shot --  
"Hey, aren't you going to wash your hands?" "What  
do you think I am, do you think I tinkle on my hands?" --,  
and he did say 'tinkle'. Which is hilarious.

I guess.

All of a sudden I'm missing my pussy. Now,  
who'd have thought it?

Thankfully, he finally loses the wet boxers  
and puts on dry ones, staring resolutely at the ceiling all the  
while, and then he's dressed, and his pants are tight so that  
jiggly-wobbly sensation stops and we're sort of back to normal.

Sort of.

'Cause the pants are also kind of constraining,  
the fabric is pressing against his dick in all the wrong places,  
and the balls too, my oh my. I'd never really thought about the  
balls before but there they are, taking up a surprising amount  
of space inside of those poly-velcro or whatever they're made  
of civilian pants of his, and how do guys ever manage without  
kilts?

Ah, that's better. So that's what you do.  
You need to bend your knees a little and hoick and grab and pat  
everything around a bit, and then it snuggles into place and yes,  
we're good to go.

He hasn't even noticed he's just done that,  
has he?

Because he's all intent on walking now.  
He's walking very fast. His walk is different than what I'm used  
to, his hips move differently, and the knee joints are somehow  
attached in an unfamiliar way to the thighs. But it gets him around  
very fast and before I know it, we're in the mess hall and making  
a bee line for...

... the coffee.

"Oh no, you don't! I'm not having that  
in me first thing in the morning! Caffeine is _so_ unhealthy;  
people think it gives them a shot but it only lasts for like,  
a half hour, it causes cancer, it's totally acidic and fantastically  
bad for your stomach lining and..."

_Gulp_. _Gulp_.

I guess Rodney McKay doesn't give a crap's  
ass about his stomach lining because he's pouring that stuff down  
my gullet like nobody's business.

And hooray! The headache has stopped.

This man must really be addicted.

"You must really be addicted,"  
I tell him. "You've got to break this habit. I mean, it's  
giving you headaches, you're having withdrawal symptoms..."

"You are too right that I am having  
withdrawal symptoms. I am having withdrawal symptoms from my _life_!  
And no, we are not going in that direction, why are you trying  
to make me approach the fruit tray? I cannot ingest citrus, you  
know that I'm allergic, I've mentioned this a thousand times already."

"It is so much healthier than that  
caffeine shit. You're poisoning yourself! Every day! And poisoning  
me! Yes, me, because now that I'm in you, I get poisoned as well."

"Oh, spare me your sermonising. Isn't  
it enough that I am _stuck_ with you in my head? Do I have  
to listen to your whining all day, as well? Can't we just have  
breakfast with at least some semblance of peace and quiet?"

"Well, it's not just _you_ stuck  
with _me_. _I_ am stuck in _you_. You know that?  
I didn't ask to be here, and let me tell you this is one hell  
of a crappy body to be stuck in."

His voice goes all calm when he replies,  
but I know he's not calm because I can feel his heart buzzing  
like a killer bee, and his breath is shallow. "Now, Cadman,"  
he says, all calm and slow but with his heart going _badoomph,  
badoomph_. "I would really be very grateful if you stopped  
making personal remarks in that infantile way. Especially personal  
remarks about my body which, might I remind you, is the only body  
you've got at the moment so why don't you just be grateful for  
it and be a good quiet girl and let me get on with the important  
things so that we can maybe, just maybe, rescue this hellforsaken  
situation?"

"You're just being stubborn. I bet  
it's not a real allergy. It's probably just a trick of the mind."

"I am _not_ being stubborn!"  
he yells, so loud that a dozen heads swivel round and someone  
drops their plate with a clang. "It is not a trick of the  
mind!"

**Friday, early afternoon**

It is not a trick of the mind.

We're sick as dogs. We just about made it  
to the bathroom after that post-lunch siesta during which I snuck  
out to get my fix of grapefruit juice, it's not as though it was  
a lot, just a tiny sip; and it's not even real grapefruit, either,  
just some weird off-world substitute. But, boy, was that a mistake,  
because now I'm hanging onto the toilet bowl for dear life. There's  
sweat on my neck, my stomach muscles are convulsing, and green  
and yellow spots are dancing the polka across my eyeballs.

"Jesus, Cadman, you're a full-blown  
hell of an idiot." McKay presses the words out through gritted  
teeth.

I am even willing to concede this. I don't  
get the chance to say anything, though, because now we're vomiting  
into the toilet bowl.

Shit, this feels so not good.

"I swear, Cadman," he gasps. "You  
making me suffer like this..."

"Don't worry, it's my allergy too,  
now. I'm suffering, too."

"Good," he says, "good."  
And then we both zonk out on the bathroom mat.

**Friday afternoon**

Figures. He just isn't fit enough. Not as  
fit as me, anyhow.

So it figures that he'd be out cold for  
longer. Me, I've woken up and I'm laying here on the mat, staring  
at the shower from below, seeing everything upside down, the shower  
head and the curtain all off its rails. It's not very entertaining  
but he's still too weak to get up; I tried. So I make McKay lift  
his hand instead.

I hold up his hand and I look at it.

 

I will the thumb to fold inwards. The thumb folds inwards.

I will the hand to make a fist. The hand  
makes a fist.

I will the hand to flip a bird. The hand  
flips me a bird.

It is very strange. This is not my hand.  
And yet it is my hand. I always thought I knew my hand inside  
out. 'I know it like the back of my hand'. Dumb expression. Who  
knows the back of their hand?

Seems I do, though. Did. Now that it isn't  
_my_ back of the hand any more, I really notice. I remember,  
too, how it _should_ look. It shouldn't have a vein _there_,  
and there shouldn't be so much of the fleshy pads showing above  
the fingernails, and the joints shouldn't be so wrinkly. My thumb  
shouldn't hook over like that, and my fingernails are always just  
a little bit bitten. These fingernails are short and smooth and  
kind of pink, and the middle fingernail has white spots on it.  
Calcium deficiency. There are wisps of hair all across the back  
of the hand, and up the forearm as well.

I turn the hand over. Even the lines in  
the palm, it's like looking at an alien hand.

It's spooking me out. I put the hand away  
and I stare at the shower head.

After a while, I raise the hand up again  
and start biting the side of the thumb.

The hand feels big and warm against my mouth.

It's a weird hand. It's an okay hand. But  
damn it all to fucking hell, it's not _my_ hand.

**Friday, early evening**

There's something that I haven't told McKay.

He's striding along through the corridors,  
and for once, I don't care, I'm just along for the ride right  
now. I've got some happy thoughts to occupy me, and I'm just hanging  
on in here, thinking my happy thoughts, my _gleeful_ thoughts,  
because I pulled one over McKay; oh, this is going to be so good.

Thing is, when I snuck out while McKay was  
having his siesta in my brain? I didn't only go and drink that  
juice, okay, which was a mega-stupid thing to do, I see that now.  
But I also did something else, hee, it's making me giggle inside.  
I went to see Beckett, _Dr Beckett_, Dr _Carson Beckett_,  
in the infirmary. And I invited him along to this date of McKay's  
later on tonight.

So yeah. If I had a face, I'd be grinning  
all over it.

And because of the grinning to myself inside  
McKay's head, I'm not really so bothered right now about being  
schlepped all over Atlantis, into transporters and out of them,  
along corridors and along some more corridors; he knows places  
in this city that I didn't even know existed. But then he's been  
here much longer than me.

One thing, though. I have to say it is _really_  
cool to have the Ancient gene.

The way he doesn't even have to lift his  
hand to open doors. I mean, I thought it was amazing that all  
you had to do was wave your hand across some glowing panels and  
make doors open and lights turn on but the gene is something else  
entirely. Oh boy, that gene thing is _so_ awesome. Here,  
for example, here we are at a door, big huge door, more like a  
warehouse gate, and all he has to do is _think_ at it. I  
can feel him _thinking_ at it. There's a sort of jolt in  
his thoughts. No, not a jolt, more like a reshuffling. First time  
I noticed it, I was like _ooh_, what was that? And once he's  
done this shuffling, it's like the thought sort of goes out of  
his head into the door, and _whoosh_, that door just glides  
right open. We march through, and he's going _shuffle_ in  
his head, doesn't even stop, just keeps on marching, and I can  
hear the door whooshing shut behind.

Awe_some_.

Faucets, too. Just thinks at them and water  
spurts out. Lights. Air conditioning. Toilets flushing. Those  
dimmer things on the windows. Computer displays. It's brilliant!  
It's magic!

So where are we now? Aha, I know. This is  
the hangar. Dr Zelenka's hangar.

We are in this hangar seventeen million  
times a day. I getting so sick of this hangar. And we see Dr Zelenka  
seventeen million times a day, too. I barely even knew how to  
pronounce his name before, when I was still me, but now, since  
yesterday, we've been practically joined at the hip.

I think I'll just try to relax and think  
my happy Dr-Beckett-thoughts. Because once those two, McKay and  
Dr Zelenka get talking, I might as well be in a coma; they talk  
a mile a minute, they shout and they wave their arms, and what  
they yadda on about makes about as much sense to me as parakeets  
yacking. And they never explain anything. You want to ask a question,  
they just yell at you to shut up. Well, McKay does; Zelenka stops  
and waits, and then starts up again a minute later, blabbering  
at the speed of sound.

Well, let the shouting roll, and the arm  
waving, and the blathering on about I don't know what. I can't  
understand four-fifths of the things that come out of my mouth  
when I'm in this hangar so it's easy to tune them out.

To tune them out and think about Dr Beckett.

I have to say that before, when I was still  
me, I didn't see Dr Beckett an awful lot. I'm not the kind of  
person to get sick a lot. I'm never sick, heck, I don't even get  
menstrual cramps. But there was that time when we were together  
for a bit, right after I saved his life. When we were out on that  
planet, can't remember the name of it now, some long string of  
numbers and letters. And when I'd hacked that six-foot tall man-eating  
plant to death, if you can hack a plant to death, with my standard-issue  
machete. Just after that, with the tendrils wrapped around him  
and his shirt sort of _torn_ and when he still had plant  
juices dripping down his face and looked like something hatched  
by that mother from _Aliens_. He sort of looked at me then.  
A _look_ look.

And god, does he have a pair of gorgeous  
eyes.

And the way his eyebrows sort of slope across  
the top of his eyes. And the way his hair curves around the top  
of his ears. And that three-day beard, and that cute little pompadour,  
and those hands, and those eyes, oh my, those eyes.

Now, of course, I see Dr Beckett ten times  
a day, but he never looks at me anymore. He looks right through  
me, and he just says, "Rrrodney."

Like I'm not even there.

Actually, it's not just him, either. Come  
to think of it. It's everybody.

It is quite amazing how men look at men  
in a different way than how men look at women.

Or how men look at McKay, I should say.  
I've got no idea, after all, how men look at men in general but  
the way that they look at McKay? That is _very_ different  
to how men look at me.

Looked.

Even men who I didn't like and who didn't  
like me. They still looked at me, I don't know, they acknowledged  
me as a woman. And now they just sort of stare through me. Or  
around me. Or.

It makes me feel like a ghost. Like I've  
lost my outline. Like I'm part of the decor on the walls.

So I'm hoping that it'll be better tonight.  
I'm hoping it so much. That Dr Beckett will somehow _see_  
me. He knows, after all. He knows all about me being trapped inside  
McKay. He knows that this isn't my real body but that the real  
me is in here, somewhere, and surely he'll remember, once we're  
out of that depressing infirmary environment and in nicer surroundings.  
Maybe there'll be candles, and flowers... No, what am I thinking?  
There aren't going to be any flowers because if there were going  
to be flowers, McKay would have to be bringing them, and when  
I said, "McKay, why don't you take her some flowers?",  
he snorted and said, "Cadman, she's a _botanist_. What  
would she want with flowers?"

I never heard anything so dumb in my life.

Anyway, here we are, doing the shouting  
and the waving and the mouth compressing, oh yeah, we have to  
do the mouth compressing, it seems. We do that mouth compressing  
so much that my cheeks start to feel like they're stuck in a nutcracker.  
And then suddenly it's all quiet, and I tune back in, and there's  
Dr Zelenka.

And yeah. _He's_ looking at me all  
right.

I know that look. That is a real _look_.  
It is so much of a real look that it goes right through my eyes  
and down past my throat into my stomach, McKay's stomach, and  
there it settles, _whoomph_, above his flabby waistline.

But McKay, does he notice anything?

Nope.

Guy's as thick as a three-foot brick wall.

No, thicker.

There's this moment of quiet but it turns  
out that's only because of _me_. Because I've been so dumbstruck  
by that look of Dr Zelenka's. That sort of lost look, with the  
fluorescent lights reflecting off his glasses; maybe it's those  
lights that are making his eyes look lost.

But then I remember myself, and McKay continues  
shouting and waving and lip-compressing, and I'm here, inside  
his head, kind of reeling. Kind of thinking, whoa, if it wasn't  
for Dr Beckett. And then remembering, double whoa, this one's  
not for me.

This one _seems_ to be looking at me  
but he's actually looking at McKay.

**Friday evening**

Finally, we're on our way. I'm so excited!  
And so is McKay, hah. I can feel it. I can feel his pulse racing,  
_shoom shoom_. Or is that my pulse? Hard to tell.

Five more minutes and I'll be having dinner  
with Dr Beckett!

But McKay. What am I going to do about McKay?  
And what is he _wearing_? But would he take my advice? You  
bet not. I mean, running shoes! Who wears running shoes on a date?  
And tuck in your shirt, man, don't let it flop over your belt,  
that's what Boy Scouts do; it's bad enough that the shirt looks  
like it's from the discount rack at K-Mart. I guess, though, that  
what with the flabby belly and all it might even be better to  
let the shirt hang out, but at least do up the jacket buttons!

What on Earth, and what on Atlantis, does  
Katie Brown see in him? It must be some sort of power thing. It  
can't be anything else. She must be one of those civilians who  
fall for sciencey authority, and what with him being the right-hand  
man of Dr Weir and the smartest guy in two galaxies and wow, look,  
he gets to go off-world and I don't, poor me, I just get to sit  
in my lab with the plant specimens he brings back for me. Or _not_.

Plant specimens? Flowers? Chocolate? Not  
even a bottle of anything.

But Katie Brown, she didn't just agree to  
this date thing out of pity. She was _really_ excited. And  
I know! I saw!

You wouldn't think it to look at her. All  
prim and proper. 'Proper little madam', is what Mom calls girls  
like her. I mean, don't get me wrong. Katie's a sweetie and all  
but she _is_ just a teensy weensy bit buttoned-up. The way  
she got all shy at the girls' poker night when she was down to  
just her bra and panties. What did she think strip poker _was_?  
Not that she's got anything to hide. I don't get what she's so  
uptight about. I mean, those tits, they are fabulous. They are  
_pert_.

She got them out in the end. Just needed  
to get enough vodka in her. All shy and prim at first but then  
later, after the panties had gone flying one way and the bra another,  
whoa, that girl was _crazy_. With her cheeks all red and  
her hair like _whoosh_, and she's biting down on one strand,  
chewing her own hair, and she's giggling, "Ooh, girls, girls,  
I've got a date, with Dr _McKay_!"

Huh. Little does she know.

And yes! We're here! This is it! This is  
the door to Katie Brown's quarters!

Ring the chimes, you dolt. Don't just beam  
your gene at the door and barge on in!

**Friday evening, some time later**

Okay. Not a good idea.

Bad idea. Terrible idea. _Excruciating_  
idea.

This so-called 'date'. What was I thinking?

Things are so totally screwed. Inviting  
Dr Beckett along as a fourth wheel: _so_ not a great idea.  
Third wheel. Whatever. I'm the fourth wheel. I'm the fifth fucking  
wheel, I'm the spare wheel, I might as well not be here, this  
is so, so, so not a good situation.

McKay might be a genius in the astrophysics  
department but where women are concerned? Hopeless. Absolutely  
rock-bottom hopeless. Marching in like he owns the place. Wolfing  
down the salad without so much as a 'how-de-do'. Babbling on in  
a completely ridiculous way. Slugging that wine down like nobody's  
business.

Somebody, help. Get me out of here.

I'll just have to take over. I'll take over,  
and I know, I'll make McKay get up and walk on over and give Katie  
Brown the kiss of a lifetime, show the man how it's done! And  
then I'm out of here.

**Friday night**

"Turn around," he says. "Turn  
around. We're heading back."

"No, we're not." Is he insane?

"_Yes_, we _are_. I need  
to get back there immediately. I need to explain! I need to apologise!"

"Apologise?" Nuts, truly nuts.  
"For what?"

"For _what_? For the appalling,  
the absolutely spectacularly inappropriate behaviour..."

"Inappropriate? You kissing Katie?  
Come on, how was that 'inappropriate'? Or 'appalling'? That was  
probably the one time in your life that you were being truly honest  
with a woman."

"Excuse me, what do you know about  
my _life_? What would you know about what's inappropriate  
or appalling in _my_ life? You're sadly mistaken if you think  
that my idea of so-called honesty is practically assaulting a  
woman, making unwanted advances..."

"Oh, c'mon, she _liked_ it. I  
could tell she liked it! Didn't you feel the way she kissed you  
back? How she was getting all soft in your arms and opening up  
her mouth and..."

"This is _not_ what I want to  
talk about."

"And you liked it, too. Don't pretend  
you didn't."

"I did _not_ like it. I do _not_  
like being invaded by my own body!"

"You did like it, McKay. I could feel  
that you liked it! I could feel your horny hard-on."

And that makes him shut up. That makes him  
shut up good. Who's he trying to kid, anyway? Without me there,  
he'd never have done anything about it. He'd just have gone on  
sitting there and stuffing lettuce into his face. And anyone could  
tell she was up for it. She was practically gagging for it! Also,  
I thought, if I say so myself, that I did quite a good job there,  
with the kissing technique and all. I bet _he_, left to his  
own devices, would not have had a fifth of that kissing technique.  
I bet he's one of those guys who _grunt_ and who _slobber_  
when kissing, and yeah, he should thank me for having spared Katie  
Brown the grunting and the slobbering!

But no. He's not saying anything. He marches  
into his room, he thinks the door shut, and then he takes a few  
heaving breaths, like he's trying to calm himself down, and then  
he says:

"Cadman," he says, "it pains  
me to have to say this but..." And what, is his voice literally  
cracking now? "...you are not a lady."

What?

Stomping into the bathroom, flinging open  
the toilet lid, pissing in a great big arc, clearly not caring  
what I'm seeing any longer, not even bothering to sit down.

"Just because I call a spade a spade!"  
I shout at the inside of his head.

Throwing cold water on my face, ouch, that  
was unexpected, and then lathering up with the toothpaste and  
spitting into the basin, leaving globs of toothpastey spit on  
the faucets.

"What century are you living in, anyway?"  
I yell inwardly. "What _galaxy_ are you living in? Lady!  
_Lady! _Do I _look_ like I wear a long bustly skirt?"

His mouth is set in that grim line that  
makes my jaw hurt. He's kicking his shoe across the room, and  
then he tries to kick the other shoe; he hits his ankle with the  
freaking shoe but he's not cursing, I'm cursing, I'm going hell  
for leather. He just bends and picks up the shoes, the _running  
shoes_, and then he arranges them side by side next to his  
chair, and then he's in bed, and I'm still yelling:

"Next you'll be opening doors for me!  
Pulling out chairs! I'm a fucking lieutenant of the United States  
Marine Corps, and this is just a crock of crap I don't need, especially  
from a jumped-up, uptight civilian who can barely string two words  
together when sitting across from a so-called 'lady', and what  
do you think that is I carry around with me, do you think that's  
what _ladies_ carry, a P-90? In their sequined purses, perhaps?"

But he's out. Like a light. Just like that.  
And I'm left hanging, fuming, raging. He's managed to shut me  
out, I don't know how he did that, but now he's asleep, I can't  
fucking believe this.

I'm not asleep. I'm seething.

I'm staring at his pillow because, of course,  
he's on his _front_, and I hate it when he does that, just  
throws himself on his bed, face-down, who sleeps like that? I  
mean, why does anybody need a special orthopaedic mattress for  
their _back_ when all they do is sleep on their front and  
dig my nose into the sheets?

I wrench my brain into gear and I make his  
body get up.

I pace. I'm pacing around his room. How  
did I get into such a state? I don't know why I'm in such a state.  
It's him, he's the one who should be in a state.

Stupid shoes. This is the second time that  
I've tripped over them.

I pick them up and I chuck them at the wall,  
first one, then the other. _Kerthunk_.

Okay. What is this? Why am I in this state?  
And I _am_ in a state. It damn well got to me when he called  
me _not_ a lady. It's the stupidest feeling ever. I don't  
even want to _be_ a lady, it's the last thing I want to be.  
So why am I getting into such a state when he's telling me I'm  
not one? I mean, what does he think I joined the army for, huh?  
To traipse around in high heels and bat my eyelashes? To have  
doors opened for me and the man walking on the street-side of  
the pavement to _protect_ me from the big bad cars? I can  
open my own freaking doors, and I am here to protect _men_  
like him from big bad things, and...

...and come to think of it, McKay is actually  
the last man on Earth to open anybody's door or pull out anybody's  
chair. And if a girl batted her eyelashes at him, I don't think  
he'd even notice. The stupid dolt.

I've started to chew on his thumb nail.

This is no good. I'm going to have to go  
running. To calm myself down.

Where are those shoes of his? Can't see  
a thing in this stupid room; does the gene work even when he's  
asleep? Not going to risk it. I just turn on the lamp manually.

There are the shoes, laying around where  
I threw them. I sit down on the bed to lace them up, left shoe,  
right shoe, tricky actually, you wouldn't think it'd take so long  
to put on a simple pair of lace-ups. And it's good that they're  
running shoes because, yeah, I am going to go _running_.

The bed's still warm with the warmth of  
his body. His, mine. I put my hand on the warm dent in the pillow.  
I look at the night stand. There's an alarm there, a mug with  
some kind of picture on it, an unchewed apple, a photo in a frame.  
I pick it up: it's a picture of a white fluffy cat.

He's got a cat? Guy like McKay? You'd figure  
he'd be allergic to cats.

That's the only photo on his night stand.

His desk is pretty empty, not even a laptop,  
not like his workstation at the labs. There's a pair of sunglasses  
in a case. I put them on; the room turns brown. They feel expensive;  
I bet they've got some sort of state-of-the-art polarised lenses.  
There are two desk lamps here, another apple, his headset. A wool  
hat. I put it on; it's snug and itchy. It smells funny. There's  
also another framed picture, a black and white photo of two people,  
guy and girl, I've got no idea who they are. They look like something  
from long ago through the sunglasses, like one of those old sepia  
photographs. The guy and the girl, they're standing in front of  
what looks like a barn; they're both squinting because, I guess,  
the sun's in their eyes. There's a shadow on the barn wall: the  
photographer.

McKay? I look at the shadow for quite a  
while. I imagine him taking that picture, holding the camera,  
standing with his legs apart so that the camera won't wobble,  
pressing the shutter, telling them not to move or to move closer  
together. One of them coming to take a picture of him. All of  
them putting the camera on a rock and taking a self-timer picture,  
with their arms around each other.

But those other pictures aren't the ones  
that he chose to take with him to Atlantis.

And maybe they weren't even taken. Maybe  
that's just me, making things up.

I take off the hat. I put back the photo.  
I put back the glasses. I go running.

**Friday, before midnight**

This is nice, this night-time run. This  
is okay. I've missed this but oh boy, this body is out of shape.  
Just fifteen minutes and already he, I , _we_ are huffing  
and puffing and there's a pain shooting up through my left hip  
but hell. We've just got to start back at square one and get on  
with it. Get the heart rate up, get the blood pumping.

Get the brain thinking. Get the thoughts  
calming down.

That's what I like about running, it gives  
the brain a chance to clear. And my brain needs clearing because  
my brain is full of darned Rodney McKay. And Katie Brown. And  
Dr Carson Beckett. And what McKay said and what he didn't say,  
and what Dr Beckett didn't say. And that hell of a _date_.

And Katie Brown's pert little tits, crushed  
up against my chest.

McKay's chest.

It'd be nice to have my boobs back. They're  
not fantastic boobs or anything. They're not anything special,  
but still.

And he did _so_ have a hard-on. I don't  
care what he says. And it felt _weird_. In fact, it creeped  
me out. Not that I wanted to admit that to him. Never. But it  
was, and it did.

And Katie Brown swooning at him, like he  
was god's gift or something. But only right at the end. Only when  
he was kissing her.

When _I_ was kissing her.

And all the time the person I really wanted  
to be kissing was sitting right there, sitting at the table, being  
shocked and saying nothing and _not looking at me_.

I mean, he _knew_ I was in there, right?

Okay, this is hard to think about. Because  
maybe, what with being in another galaxy and battling alien life-sucking  
monsters and missing Mom more than I ever thought I would and  
being like, not the _only_ woman in the marine outfit but  
pretty much... What with all that, it was just a nice sort of  
thing to have a little, only a very little, a teensy weensy crush  
on Dr Carson Beckett.

So what is hard is this: the disappointment.

Maybe wasn't fair on Dr Beckett to have  
to sit there and watch McKay make a fool of himself. But couldn't  
he have _done_ more? Couldn't he have _said_ something,  
at least?

There was McKay, basically running into  
open fire. I knew McKay was clueless but I didn't think, I didn't  
want to admit, that _Dr Beckett_ was clueless. When we all  
sat around and nobody said a word. I mean, geez, at least McKay  
_tried_ to make conversation. But Dr Beckett, and for that  
matter, Katie Brown, too: they just sat there like stunned mullets.

He was, after all, supposed to be there  
to be helping _his friend_. Not _stealing_ his friend's  
date! And did he do any helping, actually and for that matter?  
I don't remember anything particularly helpful. I don't remember  
him doing anything at all! It was McKay who was doing all the  
doing! Telling Katie Brown that she was funny! That she was smart!  
Toasting the salad, for chrissake! That's what he was doing, toasting  
the fucking salad, and he doesn't even like salad, he can't stand  
the stuff. That little clenched moment when he first spotted the  
huge bowl of greenery but then he just bravely plunged in; that  
was like saying, hey, see, I'm making an effort here, _is anybody  
else_??

I've got a splitting headache and a mouth  
that's as dry as a shithouse brick.

Come to think of it, a night-time run was  
perhaps not the best idea after all. I am hung-over and short  
of sleep.

That McKay. He can definitely not hold his  
liquor.

I slow down. On my way back, I come past  
Katie Brown's door.

I actually stop and for a second there,  
I'm even considering knocking. Maybe apologising.

But no. Dumb. She'll be deep asleep by now.

Except not because what's that sound? That's  
the sound of Katie laughing. She's there inside her quarters,  
laughing at something in the middle of the night.

And that, that is the sound of someone else  
laughing along with her, someone else who's a man.

O my god. I am so stupid.

"Up late, sir?" someone says,  
and I stare, and I don't even know who it is, some kid who was  
in training with me ages ago.

I stumble down the corridor. Half-way across  
the north-south bridge, I sink down and have a rest for a bit,  
just sitting there, waiting for the nausea to pass. Nobody's around  
up here; the yellow lights on the pillars go _blink, blink_,  
there's a hum from behind one of the doors, it's getting louder  
and louder, it's inside my head.

Nausea. Pins and needles. And now I've got  
the shakes because there's numbers in my head, long strings of  
them. They float around and they arrange themselves in columns,  
some of them look wrong, some of them look beautiful, I want to  
cry.

But no. No.

That'd wake _him_ up.

In front of his door, I panic. The door  
is closed, it's locked, and there's no manual override, I let  
it fall shut behind me, now what? Now? What?

Just. I close my eyes. Focus. Focus. If  
I think about it hard enough and in a certain way, in a sort of  
slanted way, I can do this, I can open this door.

Open. In. Lights out. Lie down.

The bed's cold now, and this is incredibly  
stupid.

I can't believe it, I can't believe it.  
Katie Brown! Why would she do such a thing? Who'd invite one man  
round, and then end up with another one? What _is_ with that?  
And Dr Beckett! All this about how I'm such a lovely lady... yeah,  
there's another one who goes on about _ladies_, oh, fuck  
the lot of them.

And come to think of it, how the hell do  
I know he hates salad? Only the pasta kind, that's the only kind  
of salad he can stand, but not anything green and leafy. Rabbit  
food. Fodder.

But I know it. I remember it. I _remember_  
saying, 'Rabbit food', and spitting out some bitter leaves that  
I was fed by villagers off-world, I remember always choosing the  
non-salad option in the school cafeteria, I remember a cute little  
girl with dimples and short hair, I remember having a hard-on  
for her, just like the hard-on I had earlier, and having to hide  
it because I didn't want her to know, how embarrassing was that.

Oh god, and the numbers keep going round  
and round in my head.

The pillow is wet, and it's wet with my  
own sweat. Our sweat.

**Saturday morning**

We're lurching into the mess hall, with  
gums like mould and bones that feel like they've been drowned  
in acid. Coffee, coffee, where is that coffee?

He drinks down one mug, just standing by  
the machine. After the second refill, I'm starting to feel vaguely  
human again.

He's not looking round the room but I can  
tell, out of the corners of his eyes, that Dr Beckett and Katie  
Brown are nowhere to be seen.

I want to be sick; instead, I have to eat  
a cream donut. How disgusting is that?

But I'm keeping my trap shut. I just put  
up with it. The coffee feels good, anyway; and good that we're  
having another mugful.

The thing about being stuck in somebody's  
body: you can't get away.

You can't stomp off. You can't shout and  
scream and then bang down the phone. You can't even say, 'Let's  
talk about this later', and go and do the laundry or something.

What you do is, you scream and shout, and  
then you seethe, and then you just have to get on with it.

Also, it's getting kind of lonely in here.

"Yes," he suddenly says, and I'm  
a bit startled because he hasn't been saying much at all, he's  
been unusually silent, he's pissed at me, that's what. But now  
he's saying something, and he's saying, "The thing about  
being stuck in someone's body is that you can't get away."

"What?"

"The thing about being stuck..."

"No, no, I mean, no kidding. Hang on.  
I didn't just say that out aloud, did I?"

"Say what out aloud?" He's talking  
through the donut so that crumbs spatter on the plastic tray and  
that's kind of gross but I don't say anything, I don't say a word,  
I'm too busy freaking out.

After that, I try not to think anything,  
in case he reads my mind again, or whatever it was he was doing  
back there. I just lay low. I let myself be transported to the  
transporters and to, hey, what do you know, to Dr Zelenka's hangar.  
And we're being shown some fried mice and some data whizzing past  
on a screen top but I'm frightened I'll start understanding all  
those columns of numbers so I try to stay numb, I try to think  
blank thoughts.

I almost fall asleep. I'm zoning out, and  
then I'm solving the epicanthic square root of 103, and see? It's  
_not_ correlated to the erroneous Sanchez Theorem, you have  
got that all wrong, Radek, the looped Lutz is the fallback position  
here.

I jerk fully awake.

"What?" says McKay. "What  
was that?"

I stare at the monitor but it's just columns  
of numbers again, it means nothing, it's gobbledygook.

I force myself to uncouple. I unfocus my,  
well not my eyes, but my sort of inner eyes. And the numbers shift  
in front of the outer eyes, and god, they _mean_ something.  
They are beautiful numbers, they form beautiful patterns, except  
for that one glitch down here, the loop, I told you the loop was  
flawed.

"The loop is not flawed," says  
Dr Zelenka. "You are proceeding from alpha beta omega but  
I have calibrated the epicanthem from delta; I did this yesterday,  
I changed the algorithm."

"You _what_?" says McKay,  
and too right, he _what_?

All of a sudden, I notice Dr Zelenka's thigh.

We're sitting on stools, next to each other,  
quite close really, and there's Dr Zelenka's thigh, right next  
to our own leg, I can feel the warmth of his skin through the  
pants fabric.

It's a bit scary, understanding all these  
numbers where I never understood them before. I mean, I'm okay  
at math, I'm not bad at all but I never even heard of all these  
epi-whatevers before and it's playing around with my brain, that's  
what it is. I don't like it. In fact, it terrifies the bejeesus  
out of me. Better, much better to notice Dr Zelenka's thigh and  
hey, maybe it's about time we did something about this.

I power up my will and I make us put our  
hand on Dr Zelenka's thigh.

Whoa.

_That_ produced  
a reaction.

It's like an electric bolt just shot through  
Dr Zelenka.

He stops talking, and he stares at the monitor,  
not moving, not saying anything. But I can feel all of his insides  
shaking, they're all vibrating through his thigh.

McKay's not saying anything, either. That's  
because he's desperately trying to snatch our hand away from Dr  
Zelenka's thigh. I can feel the tendons popping in our forearm  
but I'm not budging, I've got my will on this with an iron grip.  
Got to do something, _something_, everything's been such  
crap lately, everything's trapped in crap. And this, this is almost  
making me laugh out loud.

"Stop it," McKay mutters through  
gritted teeth.

"Just keep talking," I tell him  
inside, "just keep explaining those algorithms."

Heck, they're all wrong, anyway. Everything's  
shot all to hell and back again. We can't do this, we can't fix  
this, we are screwed.

"Okay, anyway, these configurations  
here, they need to be ratified to the power of ten..." And  
he's doing it, you've got to hand it to him, he _is_ keeping  
on talking, and he _is_ going on about those algorithms.  
We're waving our free hand at the screen and blathering on in  
double-time, and all the while our other hand is resting on Dr  
Zelenka's thigh, and yeah, that's kind of nice. That's a nice  
human warmth, sweet somehow, still shaking like anything, and  
suddenly I wish that somebody would just come up and give me a  
hug and say, 'Hey, it'll be all right, baby, it'll be fine', like  
Mom used to do when we were little, my brothers and me; and we'd  
get candy, that striped kind, I forget what they are called. We  
named them 'zebra food'.

'Cause that's another thing. Nobody hugs  
us now. Nobody hugs McKay; nobody _touches_ McKay. Nobody,  
except Dr Beckett and that's only in a very _clinical_ way.

How does he stand it?

Dr Zelenka still doesn't say a word, just  
sits there so quiet, like one of those mice he keeps doing tests  
on. I can't see what his face looks like because we're not moving  
our eyes in that direction. Our eyes are trained on the computer  
screen and I can't make them go elsewhere, I've got no energy  
left. In fact, I'm not even willing our hand to be on Dr Zelenka's  
thigh any longer, I've relaxed my iron grip.

But the hand is still there.

Hasn't he noticed that I'm not keeping it  
there? Are we too caught up in our numbers?

Dr Zelenka clears his throat.

We take away our hand. It feels warm; we  
flex the fingers.

"Look, Radek," we say, "I  
really think I need a rest. I'm not quite myself today, I'm...  
as it were." We wave our hands in the air and get up from  
the stool.

"Good, yes," says Dr Zelenka,  
and his voice sounds all wriggly. "No. You are not yourself.  
I understand." And then he just sits there, looking at us,  
_looking_ right at us, him, at McKay. I've got no idea what's  
going through his head, maybe he's waiting for him to do something  
else, maybe he's hoping for an invitation to come along to the  
rest with him. But no, no, no, we are _not_ going there.

"Yes," we say. "Right. Rest  
it is, then."

But it isn't, really. Because it's lunch  
time.

**Saturday, lunch time**

We're in the mess hall. We've had our lunch.  
We chose a sort of macaroni and cheese gloop. I thought about  
going for the salad, I really did; I always have the salad but  
no, we don't like salad, so, okay, let's not have salad, fine.  
We can have the cheesy gloop. And yes, we can have a dessert after,  
what do I care, hell in a hand basket, chocolate pudding, whatever.

"What is up with you today?" he  
says, in between one spoon of chocolate glop and the next. "At  
the best of times, you're enough to drive a man to drink, but  
this morning you have been positively jittery."

"_Nothing_ is up! What should  
be up?"

"I can feel you jittering around in  
my head; I really wish you wouldn't. And that little stunt you  
pulled in the labs before..."

"Coffee!" I yell brightly. "Why  
don't we get more coffee, huh?"

It's when we're at the coffee machine for  
our second after-dessert mug that I see them.

Over on the far side, by the full-length  
windows, the ones with an ocean view, the ones the girls jokingly  
call 'the romantic tables'. At a small table all by themselves.  
At a very small, very _romantic_ table.

Shit.

And what the...

"Hey! Whoa, whoa, whoa. Hold on, McKay,  
where do you think we're going?"

"Can't see? That's Dr Brown! And Carson.  
I'm going to go over and..."

"Yeah, I can _see_ who it is.  
And no, we are _not_ going over there. Stop."

We don't stop. We've got our mug gripped  
tight in our hand and our legs are just marching on over there,  
what a fucking nightmare, no, we are _not_ doing this. I  
squeeze my brain into twists, I scrunch it all up and I throw  
all my energy into stopping us but he's got energy, too; he has  
this figured out, too; he's worked it out, how to take over and  
how to block me out, and _shit_.

They're not looking, are they?

I power up my last reserves and I zap him  
one so that we come to a standstill just outside the ladies' bathroom.

He's pressing his lips together and he's  
muttering stuff under his breath, I can't hear what, I'm straining  
to stop us from moving on. He's tugging one way, I'm tugging the  
other, we must look ridiculous, I don't care, just do not move,  
McKay. But he yanks me again in the direction of the windows,  
so I yank back, the mug tips sideways and great, coffee pours  
all over the place, all over our pants, and _fucking hell shit  
fuck_.

We're against the wall. We groan with pain.  
We clutch our balls. They are fucking _fire balls_.

"Cadman," he gasps. "I swear  
when you are back in your own body, if ever, I swear I'm going  
to..."

"What? What?" It's hard to talk  
what with having to take huge gulping breaths and the tears springing  
out of our eyes, and what with the red-hot pokers mashing our  
balls into a pulp. He gets up, we stumble into the ladies-- "We  
can't go in here." "Yes, we can, _I_ can."  
\--, we turn on the faucet and splash cold water on our groin.

"Of all the stupid, idiotic things  
to do," pants McKay.

I am willing to concede this. "But  
you wouldn't stop! What else could I do to make you stop?"

"Why should I stop? I'm telling you  
that we need to go and talk to them. I need to talk to Dr Brown,  
I need to apologise."

"No, no, don't you get it? Don't you  
get what they did behind our backs? They're at that table, and  
they're at that table _together_. Those are the 'romantic  
tables', everyone knows that."

"Don't be absurd. I worked up to this  
date for ages, well for quite a while, and I'm not going to have  
you spoil the good understanding I had with Dr Brown because of  
some childish whim of yours. I have got to explain to Dr Brown  
that I was not in full command of my faculties last night. And  
with Carson watching, too. In case this subtle point had escaped  
you, it was _painfully_ embarrassing. They need to know that  
I was not exactly _compos mentis_, they need to know that  
I was _hijacked_..."

"Yeah, that's right. Blame it all on  
me! And what, exactly, are you going to blame on me? That I got  
you to give her the greatest kiss of her life?"

"I'm getting very tired of your tedious  
mockery. Things were going perfectly well before you decided to  
butt in! Before you started nagging at me like some bossy fishwife!"

Just then someone comes in, it's that science  
woman, the one with the huge glasses. She looks a bit shocked  
to see us in here, "good day, Dr McKay", and he goes,  
"oh, uh", and we glare at her, and hell, when we're  
McKay we're _good_ at glaring, so good that she turns right  
round and heads out the door again.

"Listen," I say quickly, "this  
is not a whim. I heard them."

"What are you talking about?"

I squirm. If it's possible to squirm without  
a body. My _mind_ squirms. "Last night," I say,  
"I went running. While you were asleep."

"Oh, you did _not_," he groans.  
"Not that it surprises me. Nothing surprises me any longer.  
No wonder I felt as if I'd been stretched on the rack this morning.  
This is playing havoc with my skeletal structure."

"And I went past Katie Brown's door,"  
I forge on.

"What? No, no, no, don't tell me you  
talked to her or anything stupid. Please, don't tell me that."

"I didn't. I didn't talk to her. But  
I heard them."

"Heard whom?"

"I heard..."

And then it's just all too much. I curl  
right up and I plonk myself down inside our head and I'm not moving,  
I'm not doing anything, thank you very much, I just want to stay  
curled up and suck on some zebra food.

"Cadman? _Cadman_?"

It's pulling our face out of shape. It's  
pulling the muscles into all sorts of angry directions, the eyebrows  
into a frown, and the mouth all big and quivering, and me in the  
middle trying to stop myself from blubbing like a huge baby, shit,  
how stupid this all is.

"Stop it!" he hisses and does  
that thing, and our face is his own again.

"Okay," I say, "okay, okay.  
It's just that, that, that I was kind of fond of, sort of, I kind  
of really liked..."

"Carson Beckett."

_That_ shuts  
me up.

"Yes, well, it wasn't exactly rocket  
science, figuring that part out."

"Rocket science? But rocket science  
is the one thing that you're good at. How did you notice _this_?"

"I am not _stupid_. And you are  
inside me, remember? You invited Carson along; my pulse rate kept  
shooting up into the unhealthy range whenever Carson was mentioned  
or whenever we went along for a medical, and then last night,  
when we were at dinner with Carson, well, I... let's just say  
it could hardly remain hidden from my own body that certain persons  
were getting rather besides themselves."

"What are you talking about?"  
What is he talking about?

"And yes, now that you mention it,  
I can see how they would... I can see how those two would get  
together after we left. We were quite the spectacle, after all.  
Gave them something to talk about."

"Yeah, right. That's what they were  
doing all night. _Talking_." And that is coming out  
more bitter than I intended, I didn't even realise I was feeling  
this bitter but apparently I am. I want to curl up and cry. Everything's  
such a mess.

"Oh," he says. And then again,  
"_Oh_."

Then we're both silent.

The door's going _hiss_. Before anybody  
can come in and see us, we're in one of the stalls, _bang_,  
and shoving the bolt home. We sink down onto the toilet seat.  
We put our head in our hands.

There's really not much to say.

Whoever's out there in the bathroom is taking  
their sweet time about it. Endless shufflings and rustlings in  
the stall next door, and endless flushings, and then endless uses  
of that ass-cleaning hose thing, and then the whining of that  
blow-dryer thing inside the toilet bowl, and if that's not enough,  
the faucet is then left running for like, _years_, and then  
the hand-drying machine, and then who knows what, all sorts of  
fiddling around with her purse and the clack of something, make-up,  
a mirror. Finally, she's out of the room, and it's just us again.

I brace myself because he is so going to  
be yelling at me and what can I say? Yeah, thank you, I know,  
I practically threw them into each other's arms! Yeah, I ruined  
your date and made her run away with someone else! And that little  
bimbo, didn't bat an eyelid, just ditched you. I thought us girls  
were supposed to stick together; how could she _do_ this  
to me?

Except, oh yeah, she didn't even know I  
had any interest in Dr Beckett. And she didn't know, either, that  
it was me with everyone in the room last night. She was so totally  
not clued in. But to go kissing one guy and then to go and have  
sex with the next best... It makes me want to fucking _explode_.

"Calm down," he says. "For  
goodness' sake, pull yourself together. And don't be such a _girl_.  
You're making my head hurt."

"This is head-hurting territory."

"Look, I'm sure they were just... you  
know, just talking or something."

Is he trying to make me feel better or does  
he actually believe his own bullshit?

"Talking!" I burst out. "Who  
are you kidding? You don't think they were _doing_ it?"

"Well, all right. If you must put it  
so crudely. Yes, actually. I do think they were 'doing' it. But  
then, if things had gone my way, _I_ would have been 'doing'  
it. So."

"How could she do this to me?"  
I yell. "How could she do this to _you_? Who'd make  
a date with one guy and then go and screw another guy within _minutes_?  
I thought she was supposed to _like_ you! You ate her _salad_!"

"Well, I can hardly say I am happy  
about this but, after all, it's only sex."

"_Yeah_!"

"It's not as if it matters. What is  
it with you women? If it had been me in Carson's place, I'm sure  
I would have done just the same. "

"Oh, now who's kidding who?"

"I would! I may well have. I could  
certainly have been tempted. She was, after all, if you care to  
recall, abandoned by me. I as good as left her there for Carson."

I don't believe a word he's saying. It's  
all a load of bull crap. I bet he's as cut up about this as I  
am. And what he's saying is just spinning the bull, that's what  
it is. But somehow that's not so bad, it doesn't make me feel  
so bad, he's not all that pissed at me, after all, and he's trying  
to make us feel better, I can see that he is, it's a bit like  
zebra food.

And what does that Katie Brown see in Dr  
Beckett, anyway? I mean, talk about fickle or what.

**Saturday afternoon**

So McKay likes to shave in the afternoons.

"Why don't you shave in the morning?"  
I ask. "Like normal people?"

"What would you know about it?"  
he says, with our left cheek puffed out and the razor hovering.

"And while you're at it, could you  
shave your pits as well, and your legs? I'm sick of having these  
hairy pins."

"I often don't shave in the mornings,"  
he says, somewhat haughtily, "because I need to get my--  
I beg your pardon? No, I am _not_ going to shave my legs!"

He's so easy to get riled up; it's like  
pressing buttons. I want to laugh so I do. He's not prepared for  
that, and he yells, "Ow", and we've cut our skin. He  
curses and swears. You'd think he'd sawn through his jugular,  
but it's only a tiny nick; we can barely feel it.

And in between my laughing and his swearing,  
I have to laugh even more because that's weird, right, one minute  
'Ow', and the next 'Hahaha'. It's a bit hysterical, this laughing,  
I can tell it is but I can't stop, I'm jittering around in our  
head.

"You're not still upset about that  
Carson business, are you?" he says. _That_ takes me  
by surprise, and I stop laughing.

"No," I lie. "Me? Not at  
all."

"Good. Good, good." There's a  
pause. "He told me you were lovely, you know. And whatnot."

"Yeah, well. I bet he says that to  
all the girls, right?"

"Oh, don't be so... She doesn't mean  
anything to him!"

"If that's what you want to believe."

"She was just... _there_. It was  
just..."

"A guy thing? Are you telling me it  
was just some sort of guy thing, is that it?"

"Yes, that's it. Whatever you want  
to call it."

"Dr Zelenka has a crush on you,"  
I blurt out.

"Nonsense."

"He does. I saw it."

"How can you see that? It's absolute  
nonsense." And now he's laughing. He actually bursts out  
in a short, rough laugh, and that feels... new.

"It's true," I say. "I saw  
him look at you."

"Dr Zelenka is an esteemed colleague,"  
he says primly. "And a complete dunderhead when it comes  
to trigonometric hyper-calculus, of course."

"I'm worried that I'm actually starting  
to understand what you just said, and don't you think he's at  
all attractive?"

He literally snorts. "Attractive? Zelenka?  
Cadman, he is a _man_."

"So? You're a man."

"Yes, I _know_ I'm a man. Sort  
of, anyway. These days. Half of one." He cracks a wry smile.

"You know," I say, "that  
Katie Brown made the stupidest choice of her life last night."

"Well," he says. We can feel our  
Adam's apple go up and down, that's one big swallow. "That's  
very kind of you to say so. Carson, too. Carson too made a very  
stupid choice."

"For Dr Beckett," I say, "there  
wasn't really anything to _choose_. It's not like I'm around  
for any quickies or anything."

"Ah, Cadman," he sighs. We lean  
against the basin and then we look up and there is the mirror.

I'm still startled every time I see the  
mirror. Luckily, and that's one thing you've got to say for McKay,  
he's not a vain man so he doesn't stare into mirrors an awful  
lot but he does for shaving, and here I am.

Fucking creepy, that's what it is.

I want to shut my eyes but he won't let  
me.

"Will you please start behaving inside  
here?" he says, and it's a bit frightening to hear him because  
he's not shouting but sort of weary-sounding. "It's sometimes  
and somewhat problematic how you behave with my body."

"Well, it's problematic for me, too!  
I'm not used to being trapped in other people's bodies, in other  
_men's_ bodies. I wasn't given an instruction manual for  
this kind of thing, you know. And yeah, I can see how it's a bit  
of a bummer for you but you've _got a body_!"

We put our head in our hands. "I don't  
know," he says. "I don't even know if I'm _me_  
anymore."

**Saturday night**

So yeah. This is weird.

I'm asleep. Pretending, that is. I'm not  
really asleep. I'm just kind of giving McKay a break.

He's not asleep. He's just laying there,  
real quiet. We're on our back, and that's good because that habit  
of falling onto his bed face-down, that is a really irritating  
habit. We're in his room again, and that mattress does feel kind  
of good against our back; it must be because of our special _skeletal  
structure_.

I can tell that he's waiting for me to drop  
off.

So I curl up quiet, like a mouse inside  
my own head.

He's moving his hand aimlessly across our  
chest. I can feel the hairs around my nipples, and the softer  
bits of skin underneath his ribs. Being so silent, I almost think  
I can feel his thoughts, pressing up against my own. Almost but  
not quite.

He's still moving his hand, he's circling  
it around, like he's waiting for me to do something.

I do nothing.

He puts his hand into our pyjama pants.

"Whoa," I say.

He snatches the hand away, like he's touched  
a piece of burning toast.

"God _damnit_, Cadman," he  
gasps.

We're breathing heavily. And yeah, our cheeks  
are hot, we must be flushing.

He's put his palm across our eyelids.

"Okay," I say, still breathless.  
"Don't mind me. Just go on. Go on."

"I will _not_ go on," he  
says. "This is _intolerable_. This is _hell_."

"There's no, you know, no need to be  
repressed about it. This might be just the thing we need, it might  
be just the thing to... to relax a little."

"_We?_ Did you say _we_?  
Cadman, there is no _we_ here. And this is not about being  
repressed, thank you. This is about just having a little bit of  
privacy every now and again, a little bit of human dignity, but  
you wouldn't understand that, would you? No, you just barge in  
and trample across whatever you find, you have no--"

"Do you really think there is no _we_?"

"What?"

I'm whispering now, I don't know why. "Don't  
you feel it, too?"

"What? Feel what? What are you talking  
about?"

But then he shuts up.

We stare at the ceiling, dark, with patterns  
of wavy green where the ocean reflects through the small round  
window next to his bed.

Then we close our eyes.

He hasn't answered me, really, but I know  
he knows what I'm talking about. He knows because I can feel it  
behind his eyelids. You'd never be able to tell if it wasn't happening  
inside your own eyes.

I haven't been with a man crying, I can't  
remember in how long.

Not since Dad. That last time in the hospital.  
"It's not because of the pain, Laurie," Dad said. "It's  
because I can't control anything anymore. Look, I can't even lift  
my own hand. It's like I've lost my body even though I'm still  
in it. Like I've lost myself." The tears just trickled out  
in two long lines; he couldn't even blink by that stage.

I'm crying too, now. I just don't know what  
to do.

"Yesterday," he says, and I wish  
I could see what he looks like but I can't; I can feel it, though,  
I can feel his mouth in my face, and his heavy tongue, "I  
tried to calculate the ergonometric radiation equation squared  
by the multiple of probability factors times twelve. Twelve for  
the Wraith dart's manoeuvrability, you understand, Zelenka thinks  
it ought to be twenty-four but that's nonsense, of course it ought  
to be twelve..." He takes a deep breath. Air flows into our  
lungs. "And anyway, I couldn't remember how to finish it  
off. I knew it was Gyga's formula but I couldn't put it together,  
do you understand? Instead..."

He falls silent.

"What?" I say. I say it out loud.  
Our voice sounds choked up.

"I remembered what it was like being  
a woman."

"_What?_"

We rub our eyes. "I had this sensation  
of having..." He shrugs our shoulders angrily. "Of having  
a vagina, if you must know."

"God. Rodney."

"Yes. Exactly." We take our hands  
away and stare up at the ceiling. We groan. "This is obviously  
not my memory. It is obviously yours, and there must be stray  
brainwave contamination going on. I was hoping it was a one-off  
but if it's happening to you at all, I don't know if it is, then  
it's not... It's not..."

"It's not looking good," I finish.  
"Is it?"

We're both silent after that. One tear clings  
to our left eye lashes.

We blink. The tear rolls down our cheek.

One of us, I don't know who, pokes out our  
tongue and catches the drop as it slides past the lips.

One of us lifts our left hand and smoothes  
it along the lower lip, smearing salt into our mouth.

"Listen," I say, in Rodney's hoarse  
voice. "Can we... you know?"

We shake our head.

"I'm sorry about earlier," I add.  
"It wasn't, I wasn't. It was surprise. I guess I never thought  
about you in that way, doing that. You know."

"Oh, thanks." There's actually  
a little quirk at the edge of our compressed lips now, and that  
feels not too bad. "That is highly flattering."

"Although I might have guessed, when  
we were doing the kiss. You know. It was hot. It was a hot kiss."

"Well, it was _your_ kiss."

"She liked it. Couldn't you tell? She  
really liked it, I'm sure of it. You liked it. I liked it."

"Excuse me, I already told you."  
Trying to sound annoyed but it's not convincing, our breath is  
so ragged. "I did _not_ like it."

"You had a _hard-on_."

"Haven't we..." Deep breath. "...gone  
over this? Do we have to talk about... anatomy?"

"_We_ had a hard-on," I whisper.

The night is so soft, and the room is so  
dark. The waves are making patterns on the ceiling.

We're remembering the feel of Katie Brown's  
tits.

How they pressed against our flat, hard  
chest. How they were _crushed_ against our chest. Her little  
round tits, and we were wearing only that shirt, and she was wearing  
only that top, and we could feel her pert little nipples like  
raisins against our ribs.

We close our eyes. We sink into the bed.  
We don't say a word.

Like we don't need to.

And now something happens.

We hold our breath in tandem.

_Whoa_ is  
on the tip of our tongue but I swallow that word. I swallow everything.  
I pretend I'm not there, and in a way I'm _not_ there.

It's a big swelling sensation, and there's  
a tightness in our balls, just underneath where they join the  
dick, a sort of pulling sensation, and oh, it's gorgeous. The  
pyjama stretches, the dick nudges the fabric, and me, I can feel  
it _all_.

Very slowly, we spread our legs a bit. Very  
slowly, we breathe. It pulses between our legs, hot and urgent,  
and so _hard_. So _tight_. The balls, these things that  
usually just wobble around and don't do anything much, all of  
a sudden, they're like two hard nuts, screwed tight. And our dick,  
it rubs against our belly, I haven't felt it like that before,  
pointing up; it's so warm against our skin. Or no, I have felt  
it a hundred times, it's like the oldest, most familiar sensation.

And our hands, creeping, creeping, eyes  
closed, pretending we're asleep.

_Come on_,  
I will them, _come on._ Further down, they creep, our hands,  
both of them. And then the right one touches flesh. I can feel  
that both in my palm and in my dick, unbelievable, smooth and  
hot.

This.

I haven't felt our dick like this. I haven't  
touched our _hard-on_. It's not too big, not too small, it's  
got a vein down the outside, we trace that vein with our index  
finger, and our whole hand is firmly around the rest of the dick  
now, firmly grasping, holding it just _so_.

And it's so surprising, and so, so...

That we moan. We can't help it.

Or maybe it's just me. Maybe that was just  
me who moaned.

Because the hand stops. We lie very still  
on the bed. Our breath goes in through our mouth, and out of our  
mouth.

"You know," I whisper, and there's  
sweat on our forehead, "Katie's got really pretty breasts.  
I've seen them."

"I don't," he says, in a voice  
that just barely manages to get past our teeth, "I really  
don't think you should tell me about that."

Don't you remember? I open our memory and  
let the image spill through. And I describe it, too:

"They're kind of round and pale, and  
they've got little pink nipples. And there's a dip in between  
them. And it feels so nice to have breasts, you can't imagine.  
They're really soft. They really like being touched."

"Stop," he whispers, "stop.  
You don't have to do this. You don't have to show me this. Just...  
Just."

We lie there for another breathful, then  
we keep going. We keep touching, and we keep stroking. Lights  
dance on the inside of our eyelids, wavy lights, shimmery lights,  
and our mind does slow, lazy flips. We're seeing all kinds of  
things, numbers travelling past from left to right against the  
shimmery lights, strings of digits, equations hotter than anything.

Another stroke down and another stroke up,  
more numbers in whirling formation, and a vision of Katie Brown's  
breasts, creamy pink, and then our other hand, down in the crease  
where leg and belly meet, pubic hair against our wrist, the thick  
thatch of it. Our fingers just reach our balls, they stroke them,  
they run their fingernails along the ridges standing out. We haven't  
felt those ridges in so long.

"Oh, god." It's his voice but  
we can't even tell which one of us said that just now, we're going,  
going, almost gone.

There are more numbers, and our eyes are  
being squeezed shut, so tight, and then more breasts, Rodney's  
hands squeezing the breasts. And that's all going on in our heads,  
it must be because I haven't got breasts, have I? I've never squeezed  
breasts, I've never had breasts, I've got a dick and two balls  
and god, god, _god_.

The bed is shaking, no, it can't be the  
bed.

It must be us.

And all that noise, like a gale, that must  
be us, too. Breathing. Huffing. Gasping for air.

The sheets are sweaty against our skin.  
The pillow has slipped off to one side. Our heartbeat is like  
a trampoline, _thump thump_.

We've got come on the inside of the pyjama  
pants. On our hand, too, and sticky in our pubes. A lot of it  
came out, it felt like a vat full of the stuff, hot and fast,  
and it was shooting out with the force of a fucking Wraith dart.

We've still got our hand around our dick.  
Which is limp now. Nice and soft, and fantastic-feeling, really.  
And it seems we don't care about the come all over ourselves because  
we're not opening our eyes, we're just keeping them shut. Not  
squeezed shut, no, just lightly shut, just lightly.

In our sleep, our thoughts nudge each other.

**Sunday morning**

It's like we've been having _sex_ or  
something. It's like the morning after. Except he can't kick me  
out of his bed, and I can't say, 'well, it's been good, see ya',  
and nobody needs to go away and wait for the other one to call.

I'm getting good at the shaving. I'm learning  
when to puff out our cheek and when to lift our chin so we can  
get at the neck underneath. We rinse the razor under the faucet,  
and then we lean on the basin and look at our tired face.

"Hi," I say.

"Hello", he says. His face looks  
sort of odd, sort of out of kilter. Oh, I see why: it's a smile.

"Hi, Rodney," I say.

"Well, yes, hello."

And then the face goes back to the way it  
always looks. We rub our hands down our face and come to think  
of it, it's not so much Dr Zelenka's eyes that look lost. It's  
Rodney's, and maybe those were his eyes that were reflecting off  
Dr Zelenka's glasses.

It's my eyes that look lost. Our eyes.

"One thing," he says and lifts  
his finger.

And, "yeah, yeah," I agree. Like  
I would. Like I would ever _tell_ anybody.

"Hang on," he says. "How  
did you know what I was going to say?"

"What were you going to say?"  
I ask.

"About not telling anybody."

"It's kind of obvious. I was just going  
to ask you the same, if you want to know."

"You were?"

"Yeah. Absolutely."

"How do you know that it was really  
you who wanted to ask that and not you catching my own thought  
and beaming it back at me?"

I shut up. I stare into our eyes. I try  
and find myself in those eyes. You'd think that would be possible,  
somewhere in those enlarged pupils. You wouldn't think someone  
could stay hidden so well, wouldn't look out now and again.

I try and find Rodney in those eyes.

"But, you know," I say.

And he nods, and he looks at me with these  
eyes of ours. I'm starting to see why Dr Zelenka goes all mooshy  
over these eyes of ours.

"At this rate," he says, after  
a while, after squeezing out toothpaste and brushing all our molars  
and incisors, after shaking out the toothbrush and placing it  
carefully back in its toothpaste glass, "we soon won't be  
needing to talk at all anymore. We'll be well on our way to telepathic  
communication."

"That would be a pity," I say.  
"'Cause, you know. I like hearing our voice."

"Laura", he says, and the basin  
grows warm under our hands, we're pressing down so hard.

**Sunday, noon**

There's been a breakthrough. Rodney has  
come up with something. I _knew_ he would. Something to do  
with interfacing a gate crystal with the Wraith machine. We're  
in the hangar, and everyone else is there, too: Dr Beckett and  
Colonel Sheppard and Dr Weir, and Dr Zelenka, of course. But it's  
all so busy, it's all so urgent, action stations and emergency  
positions, that I don't get a chance to check up if Dr Zelenka  
is still _looking_. He seems perfectly okay, not put out  
at all, he's typing stuff into his laptop and then, yeah, just  
before we have to go in, he does look up and into our eyes.

Oh, yeah. He knows a good thing when he  
sees one.

'Cause we might not come back and all. This  
might not work.

Though I can't believe it won't. This is  
_Rodney_'s idea, after all.

Before I know it, we're looking back at  
Dr Zelenka. And then we _wink_.

Dr Zelenka goes as red as a beetroot.

That wink _seemed_ to be for Dr Zelenka  
but yeah, I am sure that wink was actually meant for me.

And now we're standing in front of this  
sheet reflector they've rigged up. Everything's tense. It occurs  
to me that I never asked Rodney about those people, the ones in  
his photo. Everyone's looking at us. I'm trying not to look at  
Carson. I'm trying not to think about anything.

I'm thinking, _Mom_.

And, _Dad. Maybe I'll see you real soon,  
Dad._

Real soon.

Now.

No, not now. Rodney holds up a finger. What  
is he doing?

Oh, no. We're off the platform and we're  
walking, no, we're heading towards, _no_! I tug at our insides  
but no chance, this time I can't make him stop, the distance is  
too short, we're there already. _No_, I shout inside our  
head, _no, what are we doing_?! But it's too late, we're  
already kissing Carson.

Oh my. Whoa.

No, way beyond. Way beyond double whoa.

We kiss, and we kiss, it feels like we're  
kissing for an eternity, like time's been stretched. We grab onto  
Carson's shirt, it's wet with our sweat, we've never done anything  
like this before, we've never kissed a man, we've kissed dozens  
of men, never like this, though. Never like this.

It's not like I'm kissing Carson at all.  
It's like I'm kissing Rodney.

It's Rodney's tongue in our mouth. It's  
Rodney's lips, moving against our teeth. It's Rodney's little  
dry moan, right at the back of our throat, you'd never know it  
was there unless you were inside him. It's our little moan, _oh_.  
There's no grunting at all, and no slobbering, and oh, but it's  
sweet. I'm weaving in and out of the kiss, hard to tell when it's  
me and when it's him and when it's just us, everything's confused.  
And in our minds, too, there are numbers on strings and there's  
my dad, smiling and saying, 'not long now', and we've got a hard-on,  
and we've got a swollen clit, and then we stagger back, and there's  
Carson, looking stunned.

We lurch back onto the platform. I put our  
hand over our eyes, I'm still reeling. But inside here, somewhere  
right at the back of our mind, there's Rodney, grinning like mad  
and going, _see?_ _See?_ And then I'm trying not to  
grin myself because, after all, it's death we're facing here,  
but yeah, and we move our tongue across our teeth in memory, and  
into the pocket of our cheeks, and up around the gums, we kiss  
in secret, and nobody's grinning now.

And then, _zap._

\-----

THE END.

 

8 March 2006-18 May 2006.

All original parts of this story: ©  
Lobelia

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